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Republicans think they have a winning issue with the Keystone XL pipeline, even though President Obama has already approved the lower half of it. They think it plays into their depiction of Obama as unwilling to promote domestic energy to lower gas prices, even though domestic oil and gas production has exploded under Obama, and the pipeline would do nothing to aid that with the tar sands oil coming from Canada and just moving to Texas refineries on its way out to sea and the global market.
And so we’ll see a number of other message votes on the pipeline so Republicans can paint their Democratic opponents as having voted “X times” against Keystone XL. The next venue for this message vote? The surface transportation bill.
House Republican leadership will take another crack at forcing approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline on legislation extending federal transportation funding for another 90 days.
“American families and small businesses are struggling with high gas prices, and President Obama’s policies are only making things worse,” a House GOP leadership aide said.
“This bill will pave the way for a House-Senate conference to discuss both reforming how taxpayer dollars are spent on federal infrastructure programs, and also meaningful solutions that would address high gas prices and create jobs by permanently removing government barriers to American energy production.”
One interesting part of this is that House Republicans are conceding very early in the game that there will be another short-term extension of the transportation bill, which would be the 9th since the last long-term version expired in 2009. Congress just passed a 90-day extension that goes until June 30. But the House GOP won’t use that time to negotiate on the bipartisan Senate-passed bill, instead just preferring to kick the can for another 90 days. That’s the real news here. Trying to approve the Keystone XL pipeline in the process is just a cherry on this turd sandwich.
And keep in mind, John Boehner once called a long-term surface transportation bill his top legislative priority of 2012. Those days are apparently over.
So now we’ll get another round of charges and counter-charges, of feverishly written emails from environmental groups and stentorian pronouncements from House Republicans about energy and pipelines, none of which will be in any way tethered to reality. The House will pass another extension of the highway bill, perhaps with a forced approval of the pipeline. The President will vow to veto it. Democrats in the Senate will pass a clean extension. Eventually that’s what we’ll get. And with all the ink spilled about the pipeline, nobody will mention that Congress continued its unbroken three-year record of failure on the surface transportation bill. This disables our ability to properly fund roads and bridges and all forms of transportation infrastructure. The political back-and-forth is just noise, but the hidden consequences are grave.
And the separate political shout-fest about domestic energy will be similarly unbound to the truth. As said before, oil and gas production in the US has spiked, and it’s done nothing to reduce gas prices. The natural gas boom has dropped energy prices, at the expense of potable drinking water. But don’t worry: the President just announced a brand-spanking new “Interagency Working Group to Support Safe and Responsible Development of Unconventional Domestic Natural Gas Resources.” So we’ll get some recommendations for how to deal with the damage that fracking does to our water supply in, oh, maybe 3-5 years.
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Democrats need to try to insert language requiring approval of a Quebec Hydro DC power line through the center of NH along with the XL Pipeline – that will force Kelly Ayote and other Republicans to oppose an energy transmission line in NH while forcing one other landowners in other States.
The conservatives opposed to eminent domain have taken to using Nixon’s EIS to block taking private land for private corporate profit.
The XL Pipeline was a case of landowners getting the support of conservatives fighting eminent domain who then made it an environmental battle. Here in NH conservatives are passing laws to make eminent domain impossible for both power lines and pipelines, which would kill the XL Pipeline if those laws were in place in the States it goes through.
To think the Obama administration was picking a fight with Republicans on the XL Pipeline on environmental principles is nuts. The XL Pipeline is too small an impact either environmentally or in political terms to matter.
If you care about climate, then make Congress 70-80% Democratic.
Anyone watch the Masters? The ExxonMobil ads? This one? And this one?
And THIS ONE?
Or THIS ONE?
(There are 5 or 6 like those about our sucky education.)
Another brilliant move by the Republicans and of course the Dems will publicly be “outraged” but will pass the legislation because the country needs this legislation and new sources for energy is merely a bonus. Kabuki and nothing less.
You don’t get it do you? The Dems and the Republicons are on the same team. They both represent the 1% that are determined to survive no matter what the climate predictions. Keep on dreaming Pollyanna.
Met a Canadian who works in the oil industry: everyone is hiring already for Keystone.
It’s all over but for the shouting.
Dayen keeps up with a lot, but he is way behind on this story.
The WH wants to make transportation a piggy bank for Wall Street. It solves two problems from the WH point of view. It pumps up Wall Street. It takes expenditures off the Federal books. This is something Obama actually believes in.
Moment to moment, the WH is willing and able to play any press release for applause, and does, but over the long term, this is the direction that Obama favors.
This is why Obama favored the Mica approach in July 2011, to cut transportation to the level of the Highway Trust Fund (gas tax receipts), a 30% cut that would further decimate an already battered construction union economy. Obama wants to cut Federal funding, and then add The Infrastructure Bank as the rescue mechanism. Put Wall Street in charge. What could possibly go wrong?
Anyway, Plan A went down when Mica got bad press for employment cuts, and the WH had to retreat to the shadows.
Of course, at times, the WH will whip out $500 billion spending plans and such, but that is just to whip up the base with cotton candy. There is never any realistic funding proposed, and everyone knows it is a lie.
Into the fall, the WH “Plan B” was for Congress to fail. That way, Obama could run against Congress, point to disaster, and say it would have been so much better in the WH dream world.
To the WH chagrin, the Congress did not completely fail. The Senate passed a bill that would fund the 30% missing from gas receipts. Buy some time.
The WH wants the Senate bill to fail for two reasons. First, Obama wants the Bank, and wants a crisis next December to “force” Congress to reduce Federal spending on transportation, and move spending “off the books” to the Bank. Second, Obama wants to run against the failed Congress in the fall.
The Republicans in the House are in disarray. Many would support the Senate bill, but they fear Tea Party primary challenges. The Tea Party wants to destroy Davis Bacon wage rules, and to cut Federal spending generally. For the Tea Party, the collapse of current Federal spending levels is a good first step.
In the disarray, the only thing Republicans can agree upon is that it would be a good idea to change the subject from infrastructure to “gas prices.”
The pipeline issue serves the purposes of both the WH and the Republicans.
For the WH, the pipeline is win-win. It might collapse the Senate bill by preventing passage if the Green vote holds firm. WH wants collapse, as preliminary step to privatizing transportation (Bank). Alternatively, if the Senate bill passes with Keystone, then the WH will proclaim itself a bi-partisan leader, and take the thorny Keystone issue out of the fall campaign. (Keystone is popular in Montana and such.)
For the House Republicans, the pipeline is also win-win. First, it changes the subject from not funding roads and transit, and job losses, to Democratic failure to take GAS PRICES seriously. If the pipeline passes with the Senate bill, the Republicans will brag about its pro-oil, pro-consumer victory. If the pipeline sinks the Senate bill, then the Republicans will say the whole issue preventing the transportation bill was the Democrats not willing to vote for pro-oil, pro-consumer “investment.”